Friday, 16 June 2017

This third post in the series continues the tour of my Astra Militarum army 'The Emperors Feth'. You can catch my list and how I got into the army here anwhat my HQ looks like here.

Today I fancied delving into my lone platoon and having a look at what heavy weaponry I have.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother
Every army needs light and heavy vehicle killers and so I chose 9 heavy weapon teams to sit in my platoon as 2 heavy weapon squads and 3 teams distributed across my HQ and 2 troop squads that combine together. I group them as follows:

Tactics
The reason why I love the heavy weapon squads is that I can put them behind an aegis line or in cover on objectives making them very hard to shift yet able to claim and throw out quite hard hitting firepower. I also kitted the HQ out this way to use my Company commander to sit back with them issuing orders to add rerolls, ignores cover or tank hunter to them to increase their effectiveness. Also if they came under sustained fire I would go to ground and the next turn use my orders to get them back up and start firing again! If I did happen to lose a squad, well it's only 75 points or so and that means that the enemy hasn't fired at something else!

Their biggest weakness is their leadership which is only 7 and so they do tend to run away however at 2 wounds a model in cover they can be awkward to make take that leadership test.

Painting and modelling
Obviously they are in the colour scheme of my guard - more about that in a future post talking about the troop squads and veterans. What I really wanted to talk about was the bases...

When I was first looking at getting heavy weapon squads the idea of the stand of the weapon on a flat base seemed just too boring. At first I thought I'd model something up but a few sandbags is as much as I could realistically manage so I started browsing for some resin bases online. A quick search found me at a company called Black Cat Bases which produced just the kind of style I was looking for - urban ruins.

I ordered a couple of packs and when they came they were sculpted really nicely with great details. The only problem I could see was that with the walls and sandbags there wasn't a lot of room on the base for a heavy weapon, stand and 2 models!! After a bit of dry fitting I found that it would be quite cool to have both guardsmen standing, 1 firing the heavy weapon and 1 guarding or shooting some unseen enemy. This pose kind of looked like a hastily set up position in the middle of an engagement - some ruins and a few sandbags for cover, the heavy weapon dumped on top of a wall for speed rather than fixed to a proper stand.

The missile launchers are more portable so I went for a different style - Flat terrain, firing on the run with the second guardsman supporting with ammo. Run, fire, run sort of thing.

With the poses sorted I needed to paint the terrain. The theme for my army was very much to be fighting in a 20th century 1st world urban environment - red brick and cement - it just feels more realistic even though we are 38,000 years into the future!!!
So Scab red bricks, Bleached bone cement in-between and Scorched brown wood all washed and highlighted. I also couldn't refuse the standard black and white checks of a hall or kitchen either. These details and the brightly coloured rubble on the other bases broke up the gloom nicely and added some light to the bases. Some wash of devlan mud across the base pooled nicely to give a weathered in the rain look too.
The sandbags were Scorched brown drybrushed with snakebite leather, bleached bone and then skull white - dead easy!!

I hope that you have enjoyed my little ramble through my troop heavy weapon squads. Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions to improve them then let me know in the comments.

See you soon

James

fourdadsoftheapocalypse.blogspot.co.uk – A blog about Warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy by four Dads